


Way Down

by lazarov



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Anorexia, Awkward Conversations, Bonding, Eating Disorders, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Health Issues, Pre-Magic and Post-Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-01 23:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14531697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarov/pseuds/lazarov
Summary: Even hidden under layers of baggy clothes, it was clear that she was still tiny. But there was a new softness to her face, like the sharp angles of her jaw and cheekbones had been smudged into something gentler.In all the years he’d known her, Quentin was pretty sure he’d never seen her look so beautiful. It was like Jane Chatwin herself had turned back the clock, and now he was being reintroduced to Old Julia – before the secrets and diet pills and fainting at prom. Before the seizure and the eerie silence of the auditorium as Quentin screamed for help.Julia's been sick for a long time; Quentin does his best.





	1. Then.

 

***

 

It took a long time before Julia finally emerged through the plain door tucked in the corner of the hospital’s waiting room. For the better part of an hour before then, Quentin kept his head down and tried to avoid staring at the extremely thin girls who occasionally passed by him as he waited in the lobby. They wore practically-identical outfits: sweatpants slung low on protruding hipbones, birdlike wrists exposed by pushed-up sleeves, hair tied up into messy buns.

Many of them were very young, so young that Quentin felt ashamed whenever he caught himself looking at them for too long. They milled around the sunlit, tile-floored entry greeting their family members with embarrassed mumbles and gentle hugs. There were a few dads trying to stand up straight and look stoic. Mostly moms, though: some with soft voices and others with harsh ones, their tones flitting between admonishing and cooing in a way that gave Quentin whiplash.

He watched these mini family dramas unfold for a long time, until Julia finally appeared in front of him. 

“Hey,” said Quentin. 

“Hey,” said Julia. “Sorry I’m late. Took longer than I thought to sign all the paperwork.”

She stood in front of him dressed in sweatpants and a too-big windbreaker, with a Yankees baseball cap pulled low on her head. There was a giant gym bag slung over her shoulder and she was bare-faced, her black hair frizzy and wild. She looked raw, like her month of in-patient had taken to her like a scouring pad. 

“No – don’t apologize, I haven’t been here very long.” That was a lie. “You look well,” he said, giving her a quick and deliberately-unappraising glance up and down. He wasn’t sure what else to say - but wasn’t that what you’re supposed to say to people who’ve just gotten out of hospital? And anyway, that part was true - she _did_. Look well, that is: Quentin now understood what people meant when they said a person was ‘glowing.’

Even hidden under layers of baggy clothes, it was clear that she was still tiny. But there was a new softness to her face, like the sharp angles of her jaw and cheekbones had been smudged into something gentler. In all the years he’d known her, Quentin was pretty sure he’d never seen her look so beautiful. It was like Jane Chatwin herself had turned back the clock, and now he was being reintroduced to Old Julia – before the secrets and diet pills and fainting at prom. Before cancelled lunch dates and bruised-looking eyesockets.

Before the seizure and the eerie silence of the auditorium as Quentin screamed for help.

In that moment, with Julia standing in front of him, those memories faded into the background and all Quentin could think was that she looked a lot like the Julia from years ago, the one he had quietly and irrevocably fallen in love with. 

Julia raised an eyebrow at him and hefted the strap of her gym bag higher up on her shoulder. It looked heavy, and Quentin belatedly realized that he was supposed to carry it for her. That’s what you do when you pick girls up from the airport, and it was reasonable to assume the same protocol applied when picking them up from an extended stay in the hospital: you carry their heavy-ass bags for them, you dummy. 

Julia looked relieved as Quentin rushed forward to take her luggage. Her relief made sense as soon as he hoisted the strap onto his own shoulder. Trying not to strain too obviously under the weight, Quentin added: “What I meant to say is, uh, you look healthy. God, what do you _have_ in here, Jules? Bricks?”

Julia made a face - some mixture of surprise and something else that Quentin couldn’t place. He recognized it wasn’t exactly positive and he readied an apology, like sliding a sword halfway out of its scabbard, but then she took a deep breath and a smirk pulled at the corner of her mouth. 

“Jesus, Coldwater,” she said, shaking her head. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Relieved by her laughter, Quentin fumbled for the keys in his pocket as the strap of the duffel bag started to slip off the edge of his shoulder. He just barely caught it in time.

Julia snorted. “That ‘you look healthy’ is pretty much the last thing you’re supposed to say to a girl who just got out of an eating disorder ward.”

Oh, fuck. _You fucking idiot_. Shame washed over Quentin, spreading hot and thick from the top of his skull and creeping down the back of his neck, like he’d just had a bucket of pig’s blood dumped over his head. A stream of apologies began to pour out of his babbling idiot-mouth, but Julia laughed and pulled him into a tight hug.

“It’s okay, Q. I’m just giving you a hard time, I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Quentin whispered. His arms hung limply at his sides for a long moment, before he lifted them to gently return the hug. “I’m trying really hard not to be an idiot as, um - as I’m sure you can tell.” Her hair smelled a bit like hospital and he deliberately tried not to notice the shape of her sweatshirt-covered ribcage under his hands. “I really missed you, Jules.”

“I missed you too.” She gave him one more tight squeeze before letting go and yanking her baseball cap lower over her eyes. Wryly, she said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here, okay? I’m sick of these bitches.”

She cocked her head towards one of the indistinguishable thin girls slouched in a waiting-room chair and smirked at him, her eyes squinting in that way they do whenever she makes a joke just for them. Quentin jangled the keys in his hand. “Deal. Where to?” 

She shrugged and smiled at him again, the afternoon light catching the glint in her eye. “I don’t know, all I know is I need shitty coffee and good conversation. You lead the way?” 

“Can do,” said Quentin. His shoulders sagged with relief and he finally broke out into a smile.

Jesus Christ, he had missed her.

  

***

 

“Thanks for picking me up,” Julia said suddenly. They’d been driving in silence for so long that her voice made Quentin jump.

“Yeah – I mean, of course.” He glanced at her: she’d rolled the windows down and propped her feet up, shoes leaving little smudges of dirt all over the dashboard of his dad’s Prius. Her eyes were closed, and she leaned her head against the doorframe in the breeze. Quentin continued, “Honestly, Jules, I was a little surprised that your parents weren’t the ones who” - 

“I’m not ready to see them yet,” said Julia quickly, cutting him off.

“Oh.” Quentin wasn’t sure what to say. “I mean, I get it.”

Did he ever. Quentin knew what it was like to be picked up from an extended stay at the funny farm by your parents – well, parent, singular. He was pretty sure he’d rather have papercuts inflicted on the webbing between all of his fingers and toes – slowly, with cardboard or something – than ever do that again. He wasn’t sure if the abject misery of the whole experience was an incentive to keep himself on the straight and narrow so much as it was a reason to keep himself from ever getting hospitalized again, period.

If he was being honest with himself, he might admit that the fact that he’d gotten remarkably good at saying just the right thing in therapy, dishonestly toeing just the right side of the _involuntary hospitalization_ line.

“Ugh,” Julia groaned beside him. Pushing her sleeves up, she seemed to belatedly realize that she was still wearing her hospital wristband. 

Navigating the early afternoon traffic, Quentin stole glances in Julia’s direction as she wrestled with the ID bracelet. She tried to rip it off, yanking and twisting at it, but all she managed to do was leave deep red lines where the bracelet dug into her skin. As a last resort, Julia brought her wrist to her mouth to gnaw at the plastic, squinting as she tried to get leverage to chew through the strap, but she quickly gave up.

“I think I need scissors for this fucker,” she groaned, closing her eyes again and pulling the brim of her baseball cap down to block the sun from her face.

“Yeah,” agreed Quentin with a sigh. “I think you do.”

  

***

  

After approximately forty-seven minutes of driving, Quentin realized that he was not mentally or emotionally prepared for the three-hour drive back to New York without coffee and food in his belly.

He’d gotten up bright and early and left campus in a panic to come and get Julia in time for her discharge, completely forgetting about breakfast and barely managing to keep his focus on the road the whole way to Syracuse. Now, as they buckled into the car, he realized that there was no way he was going to be able to get them back home without fueling up. It was a stupid mistake, and he felt like an idiot for creating this situation: _you’re going to bring her straight to a restaurant, genius? Right now?_

Unable to just shut the fuck up and be cool about it, he babbled as he explained to her that _he was starving, he was just going to hit up a drive-through for a coffee and something to eat quickly, there’s got to be a McDonalds or something around here – it’s cool, don’t worry, this isn’t some weird test I’ve concocted to see if you’ll eat._

He didn’t actually say that last bit.

In the midst of his over-explaining, Julia rolled her eyes at him and pointed out an endearingly shitting-looking sign advertising the “ _Moonlight Diner – Best bacon omelette for miles. Take your next exit!_ ”

So this is where they found themselves: in a bright red vinyl booth in a middle-of-nowhere diner, surrounded by truckers and waitresses in scrubs and grumpy roadtripping families, and neither of them quite ready for a face-to-face conversation. A greasy tuna melt with a side of crinkle fries sat in front of Julia, complete with a side of mayo for dipping. Quentin had tried not to react at all when she ordered, but he was surprised – her first taste of freedom after two months of having her eating scrutinized and controlled, and she orders _that_? He was too confused to feel relieved by it; it felt like she was putting on a show for him and it made him uneasy.

Not wanting her to feel self-conscious in the face of the soup and salad he was planning on getting for no other reason than that it was the cheapest option on the menu and his student loans were beginning to run dry, when it was his turn to order Quentin panicked and asked for a cheeseburger. 

Now, picking a piece of celery off the top of her tuna melt, Julia sighed. “So, what am I walking into when I get back to school?” 

“Well – uh. Finals are in three weeks, so, I don’t know if you could really jump back into it…”

“I’ve kept up,” said Julia quickly. Quentin cocked his head at her, confused, and she explained: “I made a deal with Doc Scurfield. As a condition of me agreeing to inpatient, they had to let me keep up with my classes. So during my personal time for, like, two hours a day I was allowed to sign onto my laptop under supervision in the nurses' station. I’m sure my grade dropped a little – research papers were a kind of hard to manage in that setting, as you can imagine, but uh – well. I did my best.” Quentin had a hard time reading Julia’s face: it was somewhere between pleased and embarrassed.

“Wow,” said Quentin. Pride welled inside of him, with a tiny pang of sadness cutting through it – the image of Julia, hunched over at end of a psych nurse’s cluttered desk, more worried about keeping her 4.0 than keeping her kidneys working. Even so, Quentin meant it when he told her: “I’m so fucking proud of you, Jules. Seriously. You’re incredible.”

Julia grinned back at him, pleased at the compliment. “Still, you better help me cram for psych. I’ve got a feeling I’m totally fucked for the final. But, uh, that wasn’t what I was really asking – what I meant was… has everyone forgotten yet?”

“Forgotten what?” Quentin frowned at her.

“You know,” she said quietly. “About what happened. Am I ‘Seizure Girl’ to everyone now?”

“Oh, God, Jules,” breathed Quentin, leaning in towards her. He wanted so badly to put his hand out to touch hers but he wasn’t sure if it was inappropriate in the moment and he needed, even just for five minutes, to avoid doing the wrong fucking thing for once. “ _Fuck those people_. I’m serious: fuck – those – people. Who gives a shit what they think?”

Julia planted her elbows on the table, one on either side of her plate, and rested her head in her hands with a sigh. “You’re right. Fuck ‘em.”

“Fuck ‘em! You’re Julia fucking Wicker, and even after missing two months of classes you’re still going to smoke them all on the final. They won’t even know what hit ‘em.”

Julia’s cheeks reddened and her eyes flitted away from his gaze, embarrassed at the praise. Quentin was fairly certain that she looked genuinely happy. And with that, she reached over to grab the glass bottle of ketchup and set to work trying to convince the damn thing to empty some of its treasure onto the side of her plate. 

The ate in silence for a while, Quentin being careful to only let his eyes wander over his half of the table, until Julia finally said: “I guess it’s not all bad."

“Hmm?” said Quentin around a mouthful of cheeseburger.

“I just mean, between you and me? Things could be worse.” Julia twirled a french-fry between her fingers thoughtfully. Quentin was entranced, eyes tracking the way she waved it in front of her lips without ever actually taking a bite. Catching him looking, she popped it into her mouth and raised her eyebrows. “Now that you’ve seen me pee my pants, I think that means our bond is forever, you know?” 

“Well technically all of Psych 302 saw you pee your pants, so whatever bond that may or may not have been created by watching you have a seizure in class and get loaded onto a stretcher is of a communally-shared nature,” said Quentin, struggling with the napkin dispenser before pulling one free and wiping his mouth. He could already tell this where this conversation was going.

He wished that Julia would quit while she was ahead. He knew that she wouldn’t. 

“Communal, huh?” Julia snorted a laugh. “Well, I heard through the grapevine that you may or may not have cried over my lifeless body while screaming for someone to call an ambulance so, communal or not, that sure sounds like the makings of an ironclad lifelong bond to me.”

She threw out her arms and mimed screaming before bursting into laughter and falling back against the padded booth. 

Teasing him was one of Julia’s greatest talents – which was really saying something, because she was a woman of many. Usually, Quentin was happy enough to be the focus of her ribbing – you only roast the ones you love, right? Now, however, anger welled in Quentin’s chest, his appetite disappearing quicker than you can say The Great Big Goddamn Cock. Without taking a bite, he dropped his burger back onto the plate with a heavy-wet thud and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans.

“Don’t, Julia,” whispered Quentin.

“Oh, come on. I’m just joking, Q.” Shrugging, she dragged another fry through the galaxy-like swirl of mayonnaise and ketchup on her plate then popped it into her mouth. She'd eaten nine and a half fries. Quentin reminded himself that he had to stop keeping count. Julia pressed on: “You gotta admit, it’s a little bit funny, the idea of me all splayed out and” -

“It’s not funny. At all.” Quentin snatched a vinegar packet out of the little wicker basket on the table that looked like it hadn't been sanitized in ten years. He picked at its serrated edge to avoid meeting her eyes. “Can you just -- I’m not playing this game with you.”

“ _Game_ ,” Julia repeated. “What game am I playing?” 

“This shrug-it-off-like-it’s-no-big-deal game you’re trying to sucker me into. I feel like you’re trying to, to” – Quentin shook his head, looking for the right word – “ _brainwash_ me into some kind of shared delusion where we both pretend you didn’t almost die.”

An alarm sounded in Quentin’s brain as soon as the words came out of his mouth. _Danger, Quentin Coldwater, danger!_ \- actually, no, on second thought? He thought it sounded remarkably like the one from Kill Bill: head-splittingly shrill and terrifying.

“Jesus Christ, Quentin,” said Julia, flatly. Her expression was inscrutable. She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows at him. Her hospital bracelet was still visible, peeking out under the cuff of her sweatshirt, and the sight of it, now, made Quentin suddenly want to scream at her.

There were so many things he wanted to say to her, a massive backlog of speeches he had practiced while pacing alone in his bedroom, in the shower, in the mirror. Sometimes he’d catch people looking at him funny and realize that he’d been entertaining a whole conversation with her, his lips moving silently and his hands waving in front of him. He’d practiced so much that he’d figured he’d gotten it down to a science, that he’d worked out all the important emotional beats so that he knew them like a Shakespeare soliloquy, memorized and ready to be recited in front of an audience with a perfectly-practiced imitation of spontaneity and ease.

Still: he didn’t expect all this sharply honed hurt to pour out of him on her very first day out, within fucking _hours_ of her release, while she was sat across from him in some shitty diner in the middle of fuck-knows New York. 

“Out with it, then,” says Julia after a long silence, waving him on in encouragement. “Whatever you want to say, I probably deserve it.” Quentin frowned at her, and she raised her eyebrows at him: “I’m serious, Q. Have at it, I want you to say what you need to say.”

“Oh fuck off, Julia,” Quentin muttered, dragging a hand over his face.

Julia snorted, “Alright then. You wanna mope? Be my guest.” 

She brought her straw to her lips and sipped on her Diet Coke, fingernails tapping on the sides of her glass, until Quentin brought his right fist down on the table with a heavy thud, making their silverware jump on the laminate tabletop and causing Julia to nearly spill her drink in surprise. The handful of conversations buzzing at the tables around them went quiet.

A group of women sitting in the booth behind Julia turned to cast dirty looks at him, but Quentin didn’t give a shit. They could stare all they wanted – disapproving eyes lined in navy blue, their hair done up real big to eat lunch on a weekday afternoon in the shittiest diner Quentin had ever seen. _Fuck you too_ , he thought as he stared right back, locking eyes with each and every one of them and challenging them to say something until, one by one, they turned back to their own business, shaking their heads and whispering to each other under their breath.

“Jesus Christ, Quentin,” hissed Julia, hunching in her seat.

“I just wanna know why, you know?” Quentin said suddenly, his gaze still trained on the booth full of church ladies and their hen-like head movements as they murmured to each other. His voice wavered, even though he tried not to let it. “You were doing so well after high school, I thought you had really turned a corner, you know? I honestly thought you were over it. And then, little by little, you starved yourself down to nothing again, right in front of my eyes. And it wasn’t even, like, the fact that you looked sick -- you just stopped being you.”

Realizing that he was clutching the vinegar packet so tight it was on the verge of exploding in his fist, Quentin set it deliberately back down on the table. He took a deep breath before welling up the courage to look Julia in the eyes.

 “And the whole time, I knew what was happening,” he continued, “but I was too much of a coward to say anything. I was afraid that if I called you out on the fucking – the fucking insanity that was happening right in front of my goddamn eyes that I’d lose my best friend.” He took a long, slow breath. “I recognize now how selfish and pathetic that was, and I am genuinely sorry for that, Julia. I promise you that it will never happen again. But I also need you to understand that, when you had the seizure, _I thought you were dead_ ” –

Quentin’s voice broke and tears began to burn his eyes and he gripped the edge of the table to steady himself. _Be a man, be a man, be a man. Don’t you dare cry_ , he told himself, chewing on his bottom lip to keep his mouth from screwing up into a grimacing sob. _Don’t you fucking dare let yourself cry in public._

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Julia softly, reaching forward to place a hand on Quentin’s shoulder. He shrugged her away and forcefully cleared his throat so that his voice wouldn’t break again.

_Do. Not. Cry._

“So, now, like,” Quentin continued, wiping roughly at the corners of his eyes with the cuff of his sweater, “maybe you really do think this is funny, I don’t know – I have no fucking idea what’s going on in your head anymore. But don’t sit there in front of me and, with a smile on your face, act like you almost dying right in front of me is some kind of hilarious cocktail-party anecdote.”

“I’m not,” said Julia coldly. She shifted uncomfortably and shoved her plate away - it sat pathetically in the middle of the scuffed laminate table, a cold pile of grease and fat. “I’m sorry, Q. I’m just trying to be normal, and I just… I don’t want you to treat me like things are weird between us. Or like I’m broken or something.”

Quentin frowned at her. “Have I been treating you like you’re weird or broken?”

Julia stared at him a long time before answering. 

“No,” she said. “I guess you haven’t.”

 

***

 

He waited as long as he could possibly wait, forcing himself still in his seat. Blood pounded in his ears and he pictured one of those scenes in an old movie – dust-covered railway workers standing in a circle, lifting giant hammers with muscle-bound arms as they worked in concert to drive a steel rod deeper and deeper into the soil. Quentin’s skull felt like the steel rod. His brain was the soil, probably.

Once his ears were so hot he couldn’t stand it anymore, he slid out of the booth and marched towards the women’s washroom with a surprising amount of resolve. “Julia?” he asked, knocking on the bathroom door. When no-one answered, he slipped inside. “Jules? You okay?”

Every stall was half-open except for one, and he moved towards it. “You in there?” he asked, even though he was pretty sure she had to be. It wasn’t like Julia to climb out of a restaurant bathroom window just to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. Anyway, the window looked rusted shut.

There was a sigh, one he’d recognize anywhere. He knew it so well, his ears could probably track it from across the crowd at a heavy metal concert played under an airshow while standing next to an all-cymbal brass band. Still, in case he needed the confirmation, Julia’s hoarse voice echoed from inside the stall:

“Yeah, I’m in here.”

“Are you… did you...” He trailed off, hoping she would finish the sentence so he wouldn’t have to. He sighed before deciding to grow some balls and ask: “Did you come in here to throw up?” Then, reconsidering: “Did you already throw up?”

A quiet laugh. He had a hard time imagining what was funny about the question.

“Actually,” she said, her voice clearly trying to hide her amusement at the fact that Quentin had even managed to get the words out to ask her that fucking question, “I came in here to take a piss and be alone for five minutes.”

“Oh.” Quentin froze, his face flushing. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I’ll just go” - he spun to leave, nearly tripping over his own feet, but before he could make an embarrassed retreat he heard the squeaky sound of the latch sliding open.

“C’mere, doofus,” she said softly, and Quentin followed her voice to find her sitting on a pink porcelain toilet, her knees pulled up to her chest and her sneakers balanced on the seat. 

“Hey,” said Quentin. “You okay?”

Julia snorted, shaking her head and laughing, quiet and miserable. “I dunno, Q. What does it look like?”

He dropped into a crouch in front of her and pushed his hair out of his face so he could look her in the eye. “What the fuck do you want me to say here, Jules?” His voice was warm and full of love, and he hoped that she could tell. “I can’t tell you how badly I just want to say the right thing and be here for you right now, and I have no idea how to do that without screwing up. So please,” he sighed, “ _please_ just talk to me.”

Julia nodded, absorbing his words. She dragged a hand over her face, and Quentin could see that her eyes were red and watery.

“I just don’t want to fucking do this, you know?” She finally said. She laughed hollowly and avoided his gaze by fussing with her hair, picking at her split ends one by one. “I don’t have the energy for this bullshit.”

Quentin didn’t understand. “What bullshit? Us?”

Was this how she was going to get rid of him? He had always suspected that she only kept him around because she pitied him, that she just felt stuck with him because they’d known each other since middle school. Maybe she’d held off on telling him to get lost because she was afraid he’d, like, _kill himself_ or something – he didn’t blame her for a second for thinking he was pathetic. _You_ are _pathetic_ , he thought, watching her chew her fingernail and formulate an answer to his question. Julia had a big heart - she was probably taking her time, trying to figure out how to let him down easy.

As he waited for her answer, Quentin’s eyes roamed over her, picking up all the little details he’d missed under the soft glow of how happy he was to see her. Under the fluorescent lights, now that some of that excited, artificial glow had faded, he could tell now how worn out she looked. 

The dried cracks in her lips. The way her fingernails were chewed down to ragged stumps, a couple of them rimmed with blood where she’d chewed her cuticles off. A patch of acne on her chin was half-heartedly hidden with concealer, the kind she always got around finals when she was running on too much coffee and not enough sleep.

“I don’t want to do _this_ , Q.” Julia waved her hand towards herself. “This whole thing where everything is hard all the time and I feel _guilty_ all the time. Guilty when I eat, guilty when I don’t eat.”  _Oh._ The ball of anxiety in Quentin’s stomach unclenched. “I want to be fine, or I want to be sick again. Being sick is easy, and I’m really fucking good at it.” She frowned and picked at the edge of her shoe. “What I don’t want is to be stuck in this limbo where every fucking meal is this miserable tug of war.”

They locked eyes, and Quentin resisted the urge to stand up and pull her into his arms, to pull her against his chest and pretend, for just a moment, that he could protect her. Just for a little while. But he didn’t do that. He stayed crouched on the floor with his feet starting to go numb, completely entranced as she continued to speak:

“You know what’s really funny? They stretched my stomach out in there and now I’m so fucking hungry all the time. So goddamn hungry, Q – all day, all I do is think about food and daydream about what I’m going to eat and when. Fucking fantasizing about it. But then when I eat…” She trailed off and laughed softly. “Pretty funny that I’m all paranoid about you treating me like I’m crazy when it feels like bonkers-town in my head most of the time.”

“I swear,” said Quentin, holding out his pinky finger. She stared at it like he'd just extended a sucker-covered tentacle towards her. “I swear on my first edition collection of Fillory and Further which, not to be totally expository here but  _I'd like to remind you_ , I spent seven years painstakingly putting together. I present them as collateral: I treat you like you’re crazy? You can torch ‘em.”

Julia tucked her hair behind her ears and took a deep breath, taking a moment to consider his offer.

Then, she slipped her feet off of the toilet seat, planting them on the floor to lean forward and lock her pinky around his. A smile pulled at the corner of her lips and something soft and all-consuming swelled in Quentin's chest - maybe love, maybe something else. In that moment, it didn't really matter. All he knew for certain was that, for the rest of his life, until he took his very last breath, he would never be so utterly willing to do everything and anything for someone. 

“You’re on, Coldwater,” she said, and they shook on it. 

 _You're on_.

 

***

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I absolutely love writing conversations between these two - they're both so different and they're both such terrible communicators. I love them dearly, and I hope you liked it.
> 
> More to come.


	2. Before.

***

 

Of all the months of the goddamn year, Quentin decided that January was the goddamn worst.

Not just because New York turned into a frigid, grey nightmare, but because there was a tangible shift in mood: sure, December meant a crush of exams, but it held the promise of Christmas break and New Year’s parties. 

Not that he frequented many parties to begin with but, well, that’s not the point. The point is that after December, January always strode into the room like the cruelest of motherfuckers: harsh and mean, weeks of miserable commutes and unbearably-cold air stretching on for what always felt like forever.

Sitting in the back of the ambulance feels like forever, too. Not that he’d done it more than just the one time. Still, even that one time was enough for him to be certain that the back of an ambulance was like a void – a black hole: just as deafening and just as dark.

 

***

 

When Julia woke up, two very different thoughts crossed Quentin’s mind.

The first thought, which hit him like a sledgehammer to the temple right as her eyes blinked open, was the realization that he’d never been so thankful for anything in his entire life. 

The second thought – which wasn’t so much a thought so much as a feeling – was the stomach-churning relief that he wouldn’t have to tell Julia’s parents she was dead. 

That he wouldn’t need to stand in front of them and look Julia’s father in the eye and recite the words that he’d been silently practicing up until that point, sat in the jostling ambulance and trying to make himself as small as possible.

As soon as he saw her begin to stir on the stretcher – one of the EMTs repeating her name, trying to get her glazed eyes to focus on him – the relief was so tangible that Quentin could feel it in the release of the clenched muscles at the base of his spine. He imagined himself like a bow that was pulled tight, ready to loose, before steady hands released their tension. Prey disappearing into the snow.

He wanted to reach out and touch her clammy skin but he was terrified of getting in the way. So he just tightly clutched his hands together while the EMTs checked her vitals, murmuring to each other as they took her pulse through the angry bone ladder of her chest. She was careful to keep covered up (even though her thinness was no secret to Quentin, or anyone else) but seeing the truth of what she hid from him made his stomach go ice-cold.

His voice was too hoarse and the ambulance was too loud for Julia to have any chance of hearing it, but when Quentin said her name he was certain that, just for a millisecond, she turned her eyes to stare straight through him.

 

***

 

“Hey,” whispered Julia. Her lips brushed against the edge of Quentin’s ear, soft as butterfly wings, and her coconut-scented hair tickled his shoulder.

Quentin shifted in his seat and willed himself not to get hard. It was nearly the end of class, and the last thing he needed was to try and navigate an inconvenient erection in front of Julia and three hundred of his peers. He was already uncool, the last thing he needed was to be known as Awkward Public Boner Guy for the rest of his undergraduate career.

“Yeah?” he murmured, attempting to subtly wiggle away from her so that he could get his blood pressure under control.

Professor Markham was still droning on about the development of cognitive behavioural therapy at the front of the massive auditorium, and Quentin was still trying to take notes even though his brain was shorting out from all the blood in his body attempting to bum-rush the circulatory network in his groin.

Sometimes he wondered if she did this to him on purpose, the way housecats toy with their catch before ripping their guts out.

Dramatically stretching in her seat, Julia said: “Let’s grab a coffee after this, I think I’m getting a migraine,” before continuing to chew the end of her pen, the sound of plastic on teeth making the little hairs on the back of Quentin’s neck stand up.

Judging by a quick glance at her neat, almost mechanically-written notes, it was clear that she had tuned out of the lecture a while ago. Not that it mattered – Quentin would bet money that she’d already reviewed the reading material twice before showing up. For Julia, lectures were more of a formality than a necessity. 

“We have philosophy right after this,” Quentin reminded her, trying to keep his voice low enough that he wouldn’t annoy any of the students around them in the packed lecture hall. 

Even so, a girl in front of them still turned around to shoot him a sour look, her blonde ponytail flicking sharply across his knees. Quentin made an apologetic, hangdog ‘what can you do?’ face at her. She rolled her eyes and made a _tsk_ noise before turning back around. 

Unperturbed, Julia continued: “Well then, let’s be fashionably late and…”

She trailed off.

He didn’t notice the hiccup in her speech right away - maybe he assumed that the lecture caught her attention again, or that she was busy responding to a text. Maybe he thought it was because, at the same time, Markham switched gears to the advent of dialectical behaviour therapy with a particularly bad joke that elicited groans from the class.

Or maybe he didn’t think anything of it because the blonde girl had turned around again to shoot them both another dirty look, and it was possible that her displeasure had cowed Julia into silence. In retrospect, this option was particularly unlikely: it was hard to win a battle of wills against Julia. 

In fact, Quentin didn’t notice anything strange until, still scowling at them, the blonde girl’s expression shifted from annoyed, to confused, to panicked. He registered her shocked expression at the exact moment the contents of Julia’s desk – pens, highlighters, notebook and phone – clattered to the floor, the sound echoing in the sudden silence of the auditorium.

In sync with the rest of the class, Quentin turned his head towards the sound to see Julia, slumped backwards in her chair, the tendons in her neck pulled tight like catgut. Her back was sharply arched and her jaw was clenched shut.

Stupidly, Quentin said: “Julia?” He reached out to touch her arm: her muscles were rock-hard, flexing underneath his fingertips.

Everyone, even the person in the room with the fucking doctorate who was supposed to know more than all of them, continued to stare mutely at the scene unfolding in front of them. In retrospect, it was unlikely that more than two or three seconds had passed, even though it felt like an eternity.

It wasn’t until Quentin heard the sound of liquid hitting the floor and felt the sick warmth of Julia’s urine seeping through the tops of his sneakers that he found his voice. 

“Call an ambulance,” he shouted at no one in particular, pleading with the entire room for help as Julia begin to slide in her seat. His demand was met with silence, until the blonde girl pulled out her phone with shaking hands and began dialing.

He braced one hand behind Julia’s head and the other under her arm, trying desperately to keep her from falling to the floor or cracking her head on the seat beside her. It felt like he was in one of those scenes from the movies, where the protagonist is frozen in time and surrounded by a crowd turned to mannequins.

Like Quicksilver, plucking a fly out of midair as its wings continued to beat, slow as molasses. 

“Call a fucking ambulance,” he screamed again, as Julia went limp in his arms.

 

***

 

It was less than ten minutes before the EMTs arrived. They loosed his fingers from her baggy sweatshirt and coaxed him into the aisle so that they could take her vitals. They asked him questions, and told him information that he was barely able to process let alone remember seconds after they’d finished speaking. 

Professor Markham had already long-dismissed the class, telling them to disband and not even fucking think about loitering and clogging the hallway outside. He waited with Quentin in silence as the EMTs eased Julia – still unresponsive – onto a stretcher, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his wool jacket.

“If you can, let me know how she’s doing,” he said softly, his gray eyes locking onto Quentin’s. He clapped Quentin on the bicep, kindly, and even in the moment, Quentin thought that the request sounded too optimistic. 

Shakily, Quentin nodded. 

Before he trailed, like a scared puppy, behind the medics and Julia's stretcher to ride along in the ambulance, Quentin reached down to collect Julia’s things: all of her pens and highlighters, her damp and ruined notebook, her cell phone. The screen was cracked straight down the middle, and some glass had come loose out of the corner. He made a mental note to quietly get it fixed before she could find out that it was ever broken.

Because Professor Markham had to be right: she was going to be okay, and he was not going to hand her a reminder that this had ever happened. 

It wasn’t until he was in the ambulance, hands clutched together and silently praying to any god that was willing to listen, that he belatedly realized his own backpack – along with his wallet, and phone, and laptop that he was still making payments on – still sat abandoned in the lecture hall.

His brain was already in peak panic mode, too cluttered to be able to process any new input. Not that it mattered: as her eyes finally fluttered open, and Quentin breathed a silent expression of gratitude to whatever part of the universe had stopped to listen, he couldn’t muster the energy to care about anything else in the world.

 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This hasn't been edited, my apologies for any errors. I hope you like it.

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely love writing conversations between these two - they're both so different and they're both such terrible communicators. I love them dearly, and I hope you liked it.
> 
> More to come.


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